3 Answers
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This is for 'design mode' where the browser effectively turns the document into an editor. The execCommand API originated with IE and was later added to HTML5. Exactly which commands are supported, as well as their behavior varies across browsers. Clipboard access is considered a security risk.

Why would a DOM method be in a language standard? I'm pretty sure document or window are not part of the ECMA-262 standard either.
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Eli GreyNov 30 '09 at 1:47

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@Elijah Grey: Good point. The JavaScript language is standardized by ECMA, while the DOM is standardized by the W3C. But I don't think document.execCommand is in the W3C DOM standard either. (A quick check of the DOM-1 spec on w3c.org seems to confirm this.)
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Daniel PrydenNov 30 '09 at 17:46

Yes, I have used it in IE, Chrome, Safari. If it works for these browser then it should work for the rest. Anyway, the execCommand method of the document object is used to execute commands relating to the built in Rich Text Editing features in the browser. The syntax of the execCommand is as follow: document.execCommand(command, uiBool, argument)

The command parameter is the command to execute - bold, underline, font, etc.

Then you have the uiBool which is the boolean value that specifies whether or not the default user interface should be shown.

And the last parameter is the argument use for some commands that requires that we pass an argument. If no argument is required by the command we pass a value of "null" as the third parameter.